Why You Need To Be Using Instagram Stories For Your Business
“What’s the point of using Stories if no one’s watching”? With over 250 million daily users, Instagram Stories is my favorite tools for fostering engagement and selling on Instagram. With 20 percent of stories posted by businesses result in direct messages, stories are a great way to connect with followers and engage with your audience. Still not convinced? I’m sharing why Instagram Stories is my go-to strategy for engagement.
Get Discovered And Connect
Instagram Stories Insights
IG stories are beneficial for business accounts because they provide your followers with an inside perspective of your business and personal brand. Stories provide the opportunity to drive traffic to your account with potential followers by tagging accounts, hiding hashtags within your story, and adding a location sticker.
Connect with your audience using Instagram Stories and the various tools offered within the app. These tools include text options, the pen tool, question sticker, music sticker, GIFs, the poll option, and more. You can even add the swipe up option for a URL if you have over 10K followers or IGTV videos. These tools are helpful for businesses and bloggers who want to share a link with their followers to funnel followers out of the ‘Gram and onto their website. Simply by checking stories insights, you can see what actions accounts are taking on your stories to better gauge what’s actually working on your feed.
Grow Your Community And Get Personal
Template created using Unfold
Using IG stories can help you form relationships with your followers, especially with the questions feature. Stories are a behind-the-scenes look into business. When creating a stories strategy, tailor your content to your followers' needs and focus on providing value. Be consistent with your stories - I typically suggest posting daily and numerous times throughout the day if possible. The more consistent you are, the more your story will pop up for your followers to view first. Fortunately, stories can be off-the-cusp and less polished than a post, so there’s no excuse to not show up daily.
Give your followers an inside view of your perspective by filming videos. For example, film a video of you talking about what exciting project you’re working on or a valuable tip within your realm of expertise. This created exclusivity and leaves your followers wanting more. Unfold is one of my favorite stories apps for creating branded graphics and stories templates for your feed.
Highlight, Highlight, Highlight!
Traditionally, story posts only last 24 hrs, but the highlights feature allows you to showcase the type of content your followers should expect to see from you and recap what current followers may have missed. Your highlights are the first thing a prospective follower might see when landing on your page so it’s important that you choose your Highlights wisely.
Custom Highlight Icons designed by LJ Media House
If you have highlights, it’s a good idea to create covers on Canva. This is a fun way to customize your highlights with branded colors, fonts, and icons. Highlights are quite literally the highlight reel of all your Instagram Stories where you can showcase your most valuable content and give potential followers an inside look behind the brand. On my Instagram Highlights, I showcase my best social media tips while also offering an ‘About Me’ highlight talking a bit more about what I do in my business. You don’t need to showcase every story you post on your story in your highlight- just the best of the best. Five highlights is the sweet spot since that’s how many icons are shown at once. Simply create a Canva account, choose your own branded colors and fonts, search icons that represent the highlight content, and voila - your Instagram Highlights are branded.
Instagram Stories is a useful tool to use in your social media strategy to better connect with your ideal client. With 33 percent of the most popular stories from business accounts, it’s clear to see this is a powerful tool to utilize in your Instagram strategy. Simply by using the stickers, graphics, and other tools offered within the stories tab, you are able to better connect with your target audience and funnel them onto your website. Needing a bit of stories inspo, be sure to follow my daily stories on Instagram.
